Poem of the Moment

Poetry - whatever strikes me. Favorite poets, those I feel are understudied and underappreciated; or just those I feel that everyone should read.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Wallace Stevens - I

If you haven't yet, please read the Introduction to Wallace Stevens, which will provide bibliographic and biographical data about the poet, as well as some insight into his often difficult verse. The selections for today are all from his first collection, Harmonium, published in 1923.

From Harmonium: Stevens's first collection.

In the Carolinas

The lilacs wither in the Carolinas.Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins.Already the new-born children interpret loveIn the voices of mothers.

Timeless mother,How is it that your aspic nipplesFor once vent honey?

The pine-tree sweetens my bodyThe white iris beautifies me.

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winterTo regard the frost and the boughsOf the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long timeTo behold the junipers shagged with ice,The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to thinkOf any misery in the sound of the wind,In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the landFull of the same windThat is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,And, nothing himself, beholdsNothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

On the Manner of Addressing Clouds

Gloomy grammarians in golden gowns,Meekly you keep the mortal rendezvous,Eliciting the still sustaining pompsOf speech which are like music so profoundThey seem an exaltation without sound.Funest philosophers and ponderers,Their evocations are the speech of clouds.

So speech of your processionals returnsIn the casual evocations of your treadAcross the stale, mysterious seasons. TheseAre the music of meet resignation; theseThe responsive, still sustaining pomps for youTo magnify, if in that drifting wasteYou are to be accompanied by moreThan mute bare splendors of the sun and moon.

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,And round it was, upon a hill.It made the slovenly wildernessSurround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,And sprawled around, no longer wild.The jar was round upon the groundAnd tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.The jar was gray and bare.It did not give of bird or bush,Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Wallace Stevens - Intro

Wallace Stevens - (1878-1955) - Stevens was one of the few great practicing poets to have ever lived who had a day job beyond writing. His first work, Harmonium, appeared at the dawn of the early surge in Modernist poetry - when the movement was at its earliest peak. It received a rather lukewarm reception; however, a spate of great Modernist works appearing between 1922-24 provides much insight into this. In the same year, e. e. cummings published Tulips and Chimneys and William Carlos Williams published Spring and All. The year previous saw the publication of Eliot's The Waste Land as well as Edna St. Vincent-Millay's The Harp Weaver; and the year following would produce Observations, by Marianne Moore, and Chills and Fever, by John Crowe Ransom.

From the present perspective, we see Harmonium as a definitive collection of its time: it is self-consciously seeking style; affirmative and enthusiastic, but tinged with darker thoughts of depression and defiance (Riddel 52). It also introduced the world to the first realizations of his beliefs, clarified in the "Adagia" of Opus Posthumous: first, "It is life that we are trying to get in poetry"; and second, "After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption." (157-58). Stevens, like many of his contemporaries, felt that the creator espoused by Christianity was far too distant to serve as the mediator between man and reality (Gilbert 82), and that the imagination was the only way through which man could perceive his world (Gustafson 85). He reconciled these through the language of his poetry, casting commonplace ideas, articles, and beliefs in a new way, the purpose of which was to force the reader to see the world around him, in which he was embedded in habitual practices precluding genuine perception and understanding of that world.

From a much longer essay/article. The sources are below. Please e-mail me for a complete copy of the essay.

Sources:Gilbert, Sandra M. ""Rats' Alley": The Great War, Modernism, and the (Anti)Pastoral Elegy." New Literary History 30.1 (1999): 179-201.

Gustafson, Richard. "The Practick of the Maker in Wallace Stevens." Twentieth Century Literature 9.2 (1963): 83-88.

but - though all kinds of officers(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride)their passive prey did kick and curseuntil for wear their clarionvoices and boots were much the worse,and egged the firstclassprivates onhis rectum wickedly to teaseby means of skilfully appliedbayonets roasted hot with heat0Olaf (upon what were once knees)does almost ceaselessly repeat"there is some s. I will not eat"

our president, being of whichassertions duly notifiedthrew the yellowsonofabitchinto a dungeon, where he died

Christ (of His mercy infinite)i pray to see; and Olaf, too

preponderatingly becauseunless statistics lie he wasmore brave than me; more blond than you.

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About Me

I grew up all over Appalachia, mostly Tennessee and West Virginia. I've been a voracious reader since I learned how, also an off and on pianist since I was five (currently off - moving a piano to NC was too expensive). I received my MA in American Literature and Theory in 2005, and I'm currently working on a Ph.D. in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media at NC State.
I was married to my best friend from college in July, 2004. She gave birth to our beautiful daughter on May 28, 2006, at 2:27 a.m.